UN And More Isaiah 18

On December 20, 2012, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2085 authorizing deployment of African led International Support Mission to take back northern Mali from Islamist radicals.

NPR recently interviewed New York Times West African Bureau Chief Adam Nossiter who made the case that these violent radicals fled to Mali after the successful Libya revolution against Col. Qaddaffi in October of 2011.

They apparently arrived well armed, and now live off kidnapping. Reports of dislocations range from 200,000 to 400,000.

In March of 2012 the government in Mali experienced a military coup and this left Northern Mali ripe for takeover by the incoming Islamists and sympathetic native Islamists, who have then committed grave abuses and repression in the name of their religion.

But who wants to start a religious war on the continent of Africa?

Not the Malian Military.

Not the former foreign master France.

Not Algeria on the border.

Not the over military taxed good old U.S.A.

So the UN, which oddly has become the non-nation war advocate of last resort, wants the African nations to handle the matter.

That sounds nice, but haven't we had enough of the UN being used as the drum beat for war?

Richard Miniter raised this very issue in his prescient April 22, 2011 Forbes magazine article "Why is the U.N. in the War-Making Business? Created to End wars, the U.N. Now Prolongs and Enlarges Them."

He cites the two UN approved wars against Iraq and the most recently the aerial raids against Libya according to Security Council Resolution 1973.

One thing should now be sticking in our spiritual craw. The UN was formed as a Peace organization, but now it's the first stop and chief advocate for it now that the nations of the world are plum tired of it?

At such a time as this it's all the more necessary to question and resist the vagueness and intrigue of UN resolutions and "coalition forces" and "unidentified spokesman say...", amidst all the international and political horse trading that relegates God and his word to the sidelines of the war jurisdiction, which has ever since Cain and Able been His.

Besides, if we take a step back, we can take some perspective too from the God of Israel.

He is not surprised at the UN becoming a war promoter, or that nations and potentates, and on the run Islamists, all in some way lay claim to power over life and death, peace and war, that firstly belongs to Him.

Again, this brings us right back to Isaiah 18,1-2 and God, through the prophet, telling Israel that it is not be sucked into the coalition seeking dramas of Ethiopia-Egypt and to go to war against the big dog, Assyria, of the seventh century BC.

The point of Isaiah 18 is that God can take care of Assyria in the 7th century BC, on behalf of his people.

In fact God had recently done just that in 701 BC. King Sennachereb of Assyria was killed by his own men, after God plagued Assyria's forces, and spooked him out of his seige of Judah:

"That same night the angel of Yahweh went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyria camp. In the early morning when it was time to get up, there they lay, so many corpses. Sennacherib struck camp and left; he returned home and stayed in Nineveh. One day when he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped into the territory of Arrarat." 2Kings 19,35-37.

If God can take care of Judah in 701 BC against 185,000 Assyrians who had also taken Israel in 722 BC, and now hung over Judah, why don't we nations of the world have confidence that God can take care of several thousand radicals (maybe) who have recently swooped into the largely now desolated northern half of Mali, about the size of France?

Can't God take care of Syria too?

It's also time to thank God that after over twelve years from 9-11 we in the good old U.S.A. have not been attacked by any foreign elements and have sufferred no U.S. casualities on our soil.

It's time to realize that endless war and it's costs in the blood and treasure of the whole world are also a concern for our own country that faces grave economic threats at home and needs to tend to its own people (see "Here At Home" 11.3.12 in Blog Archive) .

It's time to consider that God has been patient about our military expansionism and over dependance on military might and take his loving pruning according to the applied lessons of Isaiah 18,1-2:

"Disaster! Land of whirring locust beyond the rivers of Cush, who send ambassadors by sea, in little read-boats across the waters! Go [Israel] swift messengers to a nation tall and bronzed, to a people feared far and near, to a mighty and masterful nation whose country is crossed with rivers..."

PREACHING HOUR TV

TUESDAY EVENINGS - 8PM EST

THE FOUNDER

Tobin Hitt is the founder of the Zion Pentecost Mission. He is open to gospel partnership with all, and identifies with Paul's description of our mission as ambassadors for our king, Jesus, urging all to reconcile with God (2Cor.20-21). He resides in Cheshire, Connecticut.